Thief steals painting off opera house wall, presumably during concert

About noon Wednesday, Ronnie Palamar had to make a terrible phone call. She dialed the digits for Jeannette Le Grue, an artist who lives in Northern California.

“Jeannette? It’s Ronnie at the Sheridan Opera House,” she said. For a minute she hemmed and hawed, delaying the inevitable. Then she blurted out the news: “Somebody stole your painting, right off the wall.”

It was the rare art heist this weekend in Telluride, a town with lots of drunken bike thefts and careless hit-and-runs and almost no Thomas Crown Affairs.

But the wall in the Gallery Room on the lower level of the opera house is just a stretch of empty drywall now. The spotlight above shines down on a lonely hook, and a placard reads: “Courthouse 5:30 p.m. $900.”

There used to be a glowing but simple work of art there, crafted by a woman who makes her living painting and teaching others how to paint.

The police say they are investigating. And the opera house is offering two tickets to their New Year’s Eve bash for information that leads to the painting.

Le Grue was in Telluride for the Plein Air festival in early July. She left behind the painting as part of a Plein Air After Sale of about 15 unsold works.

It hung just inside the entrance to the gallery, where it would have been easy to grab and dash.

Though they can’t be certain, the opera house staff believes the painting was stolen sometime last Friday during a Chamber Music Fest event.

In the morning was a free children’s concert. And at night there was a classy concert event, with drinks and conversation and milling around the Plein Air paintings. With people breezing in and out of the gallery and not much security, heading upstairs to hear Cesar Frank’s “Sonata for Violin and Piano” and James Winn’s “Nocturnes for Piano Trio,” the gallery might have been left empty.

“I think this is so bad, that someone would walk in here … and do this,” Palamar said. “It’s sad because we’re a nonprofit, we get 40 percent of [the sale].”

There are no concrete suspects.

But there was interest in the painting. A couple of weeks ago, two women approached Palamar to ask about the painting’s price. Palamar had never seen them before — they were in their 40s, with blond hair, wearing exercise clothes. One of them asked Palamar to e-mail her about a discount, but when Palamar tried the address, it came back as bogus.

Palamar is suspicious that one of those women might have returned for her own discount — of 100 percent.

The thief apparently wasn’t a Philistine, and wasn’t out for pure profit. The painting on the other side of the door, which could have been stolen just as easily, was priced $600 higher than Le Grue’s painting, which was smaller and subtler.

“It was one of those paintings that take a sophisticated eye to appreciate,” Le Grue said. “Whoever that person is has a bit of an eye.”

So does Telluride have a sophisticated art thief on its hands, paying a compliment to Le Grue in a backhanded way? Or just a lowlife trying to make a quick buck?

Whoever it was, and why they took it, Palamar and Le Grue are not happy.

“Somebody is very rude to take a painting,” Le Grue said, “especially when it’s a work of love.”